Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm deleted chalk Rewarding and today's
Speaker 1: subject is going to be Wanta of Cass Steele. And
Speaker 1: it's a really popular suggestion. But full disclosure, I originally
Speaker 1: chose it as a Halloween topic. I feel kind of
Speaker 1: like you a few weeks ago, where you were admitting
Speaker 1: one of your topics was Han Dipple. Yes, John Dipple
Speaker 1: was supposed to have been a Halloween topic, but I
Speaker 1: believe you had a delayed book order. I did, what's
Speaker 1: your excuse? I also I had a little bit of
Speaker 1: a delay. I had a library book on order. Um.
Speaker 1: But I also just realized it was a way more
Speaker 1: complex story than I was anticipating. And and once I
Speaker 1: got into the story, I realized it wasn't really a
Speaker 1: Halloween episode at all, even though the legends surrounding it
Speaker 1: certainly suggest of Halloween nightmarish sort of air to it.
Speaker 1: I want a story that really gets dwarfed by her
Speaker 1: more famous family members, her parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, the
Speaker 1: Catholic monarchs who combined the powers of their respective kingdoms
Speaker 1: Aragon and Castile, her grandson Philip the second of Armada
Speaker 1: fame her sister Catherine of Aragon, who is the wife
Speaker 1: that Henry the eighth cast aside to marry Anne Boleyn.
Speaker 1: She's probably the most famous of all. Um. You can
Speaker 1: see why I want to get almost lost in the mix.
Speaker 1: So consequently, pretty much all that ever gets said about
Speaker 1: Wanna was that she was crazy, but she rant and
Speaker 1: raved to get her way, but she was so madly
Speaker 1: in love with her husband she kept his dead body
Speaker 1: on hand, opening the coffin lid, gazing at it, kissing
Speaker 1: his feet. Thus we have Wanna Loloca or Joanna the mad,
Speaker 1: and that's often the way the requests come in. They
Speaker 1: want to know about this crazy person, and that Wanna
Speaker 1: was crazy easy explains away the nearly fifty years that
Speaker 1: she spent in confinement, not allowed to write, not allowed
Speaker 1: to visit the nearby convent, and eventually kept to one room,
Speaker 1: though she was in her own right Queen of Castile.
Speaker 1: But the real story here is really so much more
Speaker 1: interesting and raises a lot of good questions. For example,
Speaker 1: was Wanta really mentally unbalanced? And why did the most
Speaker 1: important people in her life, her husband, her father, or
Speaker 1: her son, why did they allow her to be treated
Speaker 1: as she was? And finally, why, when she had the
Speaker 1: chance didn't she do the same by them? So, as
Speaker 1: you can tell, this is a pretty massive subject with
Speaker 1: a lot of complexities, and we're gonna take two episodes
Speaker 1: to discuss it. Um Plus, I just think since people
Speaker 1: have been asking for this topic since the beginning, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure we need to do right by it. But
Speaker 1: one of ultimate fate, which was of course being locked
Speaker 1: up in Tordo Seas Castle, had a lot to do
Speaker 1: with her birth and obviously because of who her parents were,
Speaker 1: Ferdinand and Isabella, but also because of her birth order.
Speaker 1: She was the third child, with a brother and a
Speaker 1: sister ahead of her, so it was never expected that
Speaker 1: she would come into the inheritance she did. Her mother
Speaker 1: was Isabella of Castile, who was a woman of intense
Speaker 1: religious conviction. I mean, hello Spanish Inquisition. That's probably the
Speaker 1: other main association you have with one of Jannah's family members. Um.
Speaker 1: But Isabella, as a young woman had fought really hard
Speaker 1: to snatch her own throne from a competing family claim,
Speaker 1: and and really had a lot of force in her
Speaker 1: personality her father. Wanna's father rather, was Ferdinand the second
Speaker 1: of Aragon, and this couple had arranged their own marriage
Speaker 1: in fourteen sixty nine, and while the partnership didn't officially
Speaker 1: unite their kingdoms, I mean both kingdoms even maintain their
Speaker 1: own currencies, it did provide a certain amount of unity.
Speaker 1: They were each acting as mona and consort, and it
Speaker 1: was a very cooperative sort of marriage. The couple carried
Speaker 1: out the reconquista together with former podcast subject and um
Speaker 1: prevented a front, at least to their people that their
Speaker 1: kingdoms were allied. But of course all these joint acts
Speaker 1: of theirs, all this cooperation hinged on the both of
Speaker 1: them being alive or at least uniting their kingdoms permanently
Speaker 1: through their children. But for the first seven years that
Speaker 1: they were married, it seemed like the air that would
Speaker 1: have to do this was unfortunately, or unfortunately in their eyes.
Speaker 1: A girl, a girl who was also named Isabella after
Speaker 1: her mother. Then, miraculously, in fourteen seventy eight, fernand and
Speaker 1: Isabella had a second child, a son named Juan, followed
Speaker 1: quickly by three more daughters. Juanna, who was born in
Speaker 1: fourteen seventy nine, then Maria and then Catherine. And while
Speaker 1: the junior Isabella had been raised to be a possible queen,
Speaker 1: the younger daughters were raised to be consorts because their
Speaker 1: parents naturally assumed that their brother Juan would now inherit
Speaker 1: their kingdoms. Which is not to say that they didn't
Speaker 1: lead an unusually adventurous life for Princesses One and her sisters.
Speaker 1: I mean, Queen Isabella was intensely interested in supervising her
Speaker 1: children's educations and their religious instruction, and she didn't let
Speaker 1: her multi year conflict with the more stop her from
Speaker 1: keeping a really close eye on how things were progressing
Speaker 1: with all of them. She took the kids on the
Speaker 1: road with her, something that was occasionally dangerous, like when
Speaker 1: the family tent caught fire, and they were even there
Speaker 1: when Ferdinand and Isabella took control of the Alambra. Deblina
Speaker 1: and I were talking about this beforehand. It seemed like
Speaker 1: Ferdinand and Isabella more than your average monarchs. And you know,
Speaker 1: we've done a lot of these sad royal childhood stories.
Speaker 1: Now um really seemed to have raised their kids and
Speaker 1: and I think that something important to remember going forward
Speaker 1: to that these would have been role models to them,
Speaker 1: not just from like well you are my lady, the queen,
Speaker 1: my lord, the father, but somebody who they really knew
Speaker 1: closely as well. But the girls were really well educated.
Speaker 1: They learned Latin and politics, religion, music, and dancing, plus
Speaker 1: a lot of domestic skills like baking and spinning and weaving.
Speaker 1: According to Julia Fox, who wrote the book Sister Queens,
Speaker 1: they would have been some of the best educated women
Speaker 1: of their day. Really, with one pretty major oversight, at
Speaker 1: least for girls who were meant to be consorts abroad,
Speaker 1: girls who would be marrying into foreign courts to established
Speaker 1: diplomatic relations, and that was modern languages. I mean they
Speaker 1: were learning Latin that they weren't learning French, they weren't
Speaker 1: learning English. A bit of a problem. But among this
Speaker 1: especially close and talented family, Juana was really considered the beauty.
Speaker 1: She had auburn hair, she had blue eyes, and she
Speaker 1: was supposed to have really closely resembled her namesake to
Speaker 1: Ferdinand's mother, Juanna Enriquez. She apparently resembled her so much
Speaker 1: that Isabella would sometimes call her daughter mother in law.
Speaker 1: According to the Women in World History Encyclopedia, Having a
Speaker 1: much older sister also meant that Juanna, Maria, and Catherine
Speaker 1: got a peek at their future as consorts when they
Speaker 1: were still kids. So they got a glimpse at all
Speaker 1: the pageantry that came with the wedding and the importance
Speaker 1: of a political alliance, and even the responsibility that came
Speaker 1: with it. But also they got to look at what
Speaker 1: it meant for someone to part the family. To leave
Speaker 1: the family, you realistically expect to never see them again
Speaker 1: in this scenario. So when their eldest sister, Isabella left
Speaker 1: home in fourteen ninety to marry the Portuguese king, they
Speaker 1: got to see all of this. But just seven months later,
Speaker 1: her husband was thrown from his horse and killed, so
Speaker 1: Isabella came home and she was devastated. So this was
Speaker 1: likely a pretty formative event and all the kids lives,
Speaker 1: and one that showed just how fragile these really long
Speaker 1: planned alliances could be. Eventually, though, it was of course,
Speaker 1: the younger children's turned to marry and Ferdinand and Isabella
Speaker 1: really seemed to have wrapped things up neatly and efficiently.
Speaker 1: They of course still had the widowed Isabella on their hands,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to remarry her. Um in this case,
Speaker 1: to her dead husband's brother, who was the new King
Speaker 1: of Portugal Manuel, their middle daughter, Maria, they decided to
Speaker 1: keep in reserve, and that's because Isabella was so upset
Speaker 1: being widowed that she was trying to get out of
Speaker 1: any remarriage entirely. She wanted to perhaps even enter a convent.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna keep Maria in hand just in case
Speaker 1: Isabella didn't come through on that alliance. Catherine, who was
Speaker 1: still just a very young girl at the time, would
Speaker 1: eventually go on to marry the eldest son of Henry
Speaker 1: the seventh of England, Prince Arthur. That's also a really
Speaker 1: great story Katherine marrying Arthur and her widowhood and eventually
Speaker 1: marrying Arthur's brother, Henry the eighth. And then finally, and
Speaker 1: this is the part that really concerns our story, Wanna
Speaker 1: and Juan would marry a brother and sister from Burgundy,
Speaker 1: Philip and Margaret, who were the children of the Holy
Speaker 1: Roman Emperor Maximilian, and this dual marriage, I mean, I
Speaker 1: know it sounds kind of strange, but it was a
Speaker 1: really good deal on both sides, at least for the
Speaker 1: from the parents perspective. It was a double strong alliance.
Speaker 1: For one thing, there was no need for a dowry.
Speaker 1: And it was even convenient in terms of transportation. I mean,
Speaker 1: at least if the kids were kind of all the
Speaker 1: same age, like, we'll send our daughter on one ship
Speaker 1: and you could we'll pick up yours and take her
Speaker 1: back to Spain. And it was pretty efficient, pretty efficient
Speaker 1: from from there the way that they saw thing, and
Speaker 1: it was considered a pretty good match for sixteen year
Speaker 1: old wanted to. For one thing, she dodged a bullet
Speaker 1: by not having to marry the widowed Maximilian herself. His son,
Speaker 1: Philip was just a year older than her and had
Speaker 1: the nickname Philip the Fair or Philip the Handsome, So
Speaker 1: coming from a sixteen year old girl's point of view,
Speaker 1: that's probably a good catch, something kind of enticing. And
Speaker 1: while she only stood to become Archduchess on her marriage,
Speaker 1: Philip was well positioned to become the next Holy Roman
Speaker 1: Emperor after his father, which was not an inherited position.
Speaker 1: He had to have the right political connections essentially, So
Speaker 1: Wanna left Laredo August with a fleet of one hundred ships.
Speaker 1: Bad weather delayed her party, wrecked a ship and meant
Speaker 1: that she missed her fiance. When she finally got to Burgundy.
Speaker 1: She eventually met up with Philip in October, so months
Speaker 1: months later, but a week before their planned wedding. When
Speaker 1: Philip saw her, though, he was apparently so captivated by
Speaker 1: her beauty that he ordered the priest marry them then
Speaker 1: and there. So that seems like, I mean, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a fairy tale princess sort of story. Right. She
Speaker 1: marries her, her handsome prince. He's only a year older
Speaker 1: than her, He's well positioned to become Holy Roman Emperor.
Speaker 1: Good deal. Right, Maybe not so much, because while things
Speaker 1: may have briefly been idyllic with Wanta and Philip and
Speaker 1: love and with Wanna able to live a freer life
Speaker 1: in Brussels, then she ever had at home with dances
Speaker 1: parties to go to, and she got to wear these
Speaker 1: daring Flemish stresses. But it didn't last very long. The
Speaker 1: couple seemed to maintain their intense physical attraction for pretty
Speaker 1: much their entire marriage, but Philip soon became emotionally and
Speaker 1: possibly even physically abusive, and he wasn't exactly faithful either, which,
Speaker 1: of course no wife wants that. But for her part,
Speaker 1: Wanna reacted to Philip's infidelities in a way that would
Speaker 1: have been considered unseemly for a consort of the time.
Speaker 1: Fox mentions how Isabella, despite her strong marriage of equals
Speaker 1: with Ferdinand, just kind of turned a blind eye on
Speaker 1: his illegitimate children, but Wanna did no such thing. She
Speaker 1: would make scenes and was intensely jealous of any woman
Speaker 1: that Philip came in contact with. She'd starve herself in
Speaker 1: protest or go without sleep. But Philip was also really
Speaker 1: manipulative and controlling as well. He not only allowed her
Speaker 1: no interest in governing, which I mean she might not
Speaker 1: have expected that as a consort, but at least something
Speaker 1: for her to do. He didn't allow her anything like that,
Speaker 1: but he also controlled her own household and her personnel,
Speaker 1: which was something that was a that was a very
Speaker 1: unusual decision to do that. He also managed all her finances,
Speaker 1: and I mean you might think of monarchs as like
Speaker 1: couples with a joint checking account. That was not the case.
Speaker 1: Queens had their own lands, their own rents, their own bills,
Speaker 1: their own staff to handle businesses. I mean they would
Speaker 1: bring a lot of that in perhaps with the dowry,
Speaker 1: but also some might be gifts from their husband, but
Speaker 1: they would manage it separately from from all of his possessions.
Speaker 1: Philip didn't let want to do that, and then he
Speaker 1: also stopped giving her the money due through their marriage agreement. Eventually, Isabella,
Speaker 1: who was kind of she was hearing rumors about what
Speaker 1: was going on with her daughter, kind of concerned with
Speaker 1: her daughter's religious state and whether she was as devout
Speaker 1: as she ought to be, but also what was going
Speaker 1: on with the marriage. She sent an envoy called Friar
Speaker 1: to Moss to investigate the situation, and he reported back
Speaker 1: that Juanna didn't even have money for alms, and since
Speaker 1: she couldn't pay her own servants, most of the Spanish
Speaker 1: one's ditched or eventually and opened up space for Philip's
Speaker 1: own picks to come in um basically endless numbers of
Speaker 1: spies to to watch Wana's every move well and then
Speaker 1: probably most ominously. Friar Thomas also reported that Wanna told
Speaker 1: him if she complained quote, she receives a great injury
Speaker 1: from it, so suggesting that she's being hurt in the
Speaker 1: process as well to the world. Though these two still
Speaker 1: seemed like a happy couple. Philip dressed her up for
Speaker 1: public appearances and they would dine in public together. He
Speaker 1: would give her costly jewelry, and they even have babies together,
Speaker 1: eventually an air and a spare and four daughters too,
Speaker 1: so a lot of kids. One obnoxious note about that, though,
Speaker 1: when their first child turned out to be a girl. Disappointed,
Speaker 1: Philip basically told Wanna, you know the expenses on you wife.
Speaker 1: I'll pay for a boy if you have one, but
Speaker 1: you can handle the daughter. Um. But back to back
Speaker 1: to Spain. We've been catching up on all of what
Speaker 1: was going on in Burgundy between Wanna and Philip, but
Speaker 1: as their marriage was crumbling, her family underwent this series
Speaker 1: of marriages and births and unexpected deaths that ultimately resulted
Speaker 1: in the most unlikely of events, and that was, of course,
Speaker 1: Wanna becoming Air to Aragon and Castile. So first of all,
Speaker 1: we should backtrack to the double marriage between the two
Speaker 1: brothers and sister sets. So while Wanna was sent off
Speaker 1: to Burgundy to marry Philip, Philip seventeen year old sister
Speaker 1: Margaret was sent to Spain to marry Juanna's older brother Juan.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got all that straight This couple also experienced three
Speaker 1: marital happiness, but in October, after only six months of marriage,
Speaker 1: Juan suddenly sickened and died. He was only twenty years old. Um,
Speaker 1: things got worse. Margaret turned out to be pregnant, but
Speaker 1: she miscarried. Uh. It seemed like things were in a
Speaker 1: bad state for Ferdinand and Isabella's family, and this meant
Speaker 1: that Juana's eldest sister, Isabella was again air. She had
Speaker 1: finally overcome her grief at her first husband's death to
Speaker 1: marry his brother, and had only recently gone to Portugal
Speaker 1: when the news of Juan's death came to her, and
Speaker 1: she and her husband, King Manuel returned to Spain to
Speaker 1: be recognized by the courtis and Assembly representing the nobility
Speaker 1: and talents of the kingdom. Isabella too turned out to
Speaker 1: be pregnant and gave birth to her son Miguel in Spain,
Speaker 1: but she died shortly after childbirth, and ultimately her sister Maria,
Speaker 1: the one who had sort of been held in reserve,
Speaker 1: was sent off to Mary Manuel, making this story even
Speaker 1: more complicated, very confusing. The family tree gets a little
Speaker 1: tight in there, but um, at this point, clearly all
Speaker 1: the hopes were on this baby boy, Miguel, whose father
Speaker 1: even agreed for him to be raised by his grandparents
Speaker 1: in Spain rather than Portugal. I mean, he seemed very obliging.
Speaker 1: But little Miguel lived only two years and died in
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred. So suddenly Juanna is the eldest of her
Speaker 1: parents children, no grandchildren from the siblings above her, and
Speaker 1: therefore heir to her parents lands, a situation that was
Speaker 1: unimaginable to Ferdinand, to Isabella, and to Wanna herself, but
Speaker 1: immensely attractive to her husband Philip, who, certainly, if he
Speaker 1: wouldn't allow her to be a consort, you know, to
Speaker 1: manage her own household as his consort, he certainly had
Speaker 1: no intention of letting her rule as her own monarch,
Speaker 1: you know, as a rule her own lands as queen
Speaker 1: to the Catholic Martin. Though it was a disturbing situation
Speaker 1: since Wanna was so clearly under Philip's control, as Isabella
Speaker 1: knew from Friar Thomas's reports, and since Philip, being from Burgundy,
Speaker 1: was not as unabashedly pro Spanish as they might have hoped.
Speaker 1: In fact, on the way to Spain, Philip insisted that
Speaker 1: they traveled by land, though it took much longer and
Speaker 1: Wuanna was pregnant with their third child at the time,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to do this so that they could
Speaker 1: just kind of take a detour and swing by France.
Speaker 1: On the way there. He betrothed their baby Charles to Louis,
Speaker 1: the twelfth Daughter, something that Wanna is a good anti
Speaker 1: French Spanish princess just hated and Wanna just an interesting
Speaker 1: note here. Even though she was still just an archduchess.
Speaker 1: She also didn't acknowledge the French queen as her better
Speaker 1: and even wore only Spanish clothes at court. It's a
Speaker 1: spunky girl who was um and that's another important thing
Speaker 1: to consider, especially in the next episode. But fernand and
Speaker 1: Isabella still hoped that the Philip problem could be sort
Speaker 1: of ironed out, and they hoped they could do that
Speaker 1: by keeping the couple, the young couple and their kids
Speaker 1: ideally in Spain with them, you know, training Wanna to
Speaker 1: become an independent monarch, as they had with their eldest
Speaker 1: daughter Isabella when she was a girl. Teaching Philip about
Speaker 1: his new country how it worked, trying to get him
Speaker 1: to have an appreciation of it, but Philip was just
Speaker 1: completely uninterested in this, and he was there for for
Speaker 1: two things, essentially for the approval of the courts of
Speaker 1: Castile and Aragon as Wanna as the heir and as
Speaker 1: Philip as their consort. So he wanted to get that
Speaker 1: stamp of approval and then go home. And even though
Speaker 1: Wanna was by this point already pregnant with their fourth
Speaker 1: child and couldn't travel, he left anyway. He was going
Speaker 1: back to Burgundy with or without her, So I Wanna
Speaker 1: had to stay in Spain for for a certain period
Speaker 1: of time to deliver her baby. She did that the
Speaker 1: second son, named Ferdinand, and then she was faced with
Speaker 1: a decision, and it was probably the most important decision
Speaker 1: of her life, or may have been, and that was
Speaker 1: whether to stay in Spain with her parents and her
Speaker 1: her new baby or returned to her husband. It's hard
Speaker 1: to really speculate too much without indulging in all history here,
Speaker 1: but Isabella was offering her daughter the chance to learn
Speaker 1: the workings of government and to grow into an independent monarch.
Speaker 1: Though it's it is arguable as to how much power
Speaker 1: Wana might have had with two parents as forceful of
Speaker 1: hers sort of leading the way, but at the very least, though,
Speaker 1: there was this chance to get away from her abusive
Speaker 1: husband Philip and live again in this luxurious, familiar life.
Speaker 1: But manipulative Philip knew that as an unpopular foreigner, his
Speaker 1: Spanish claim really revolved around having Wanna under his thumb,
Speaker 1: so he was probably regretting leaving without her at this point.
Speaker 1: I Wanna chose her husband though for some reason, whether
Speaker 1: it was because she loved him, or maybe she missed
Speaker 1: her other older children because Philip had made little Charles
Speaker 1: write a letter to her begging her to come home,
Speaker 1: or she simply felt it was her role to play,
Speaker 1: to go back and to be his wife, the loyal
Speaker 1: consort um. But Isabella wouldn't agree to it, and so
Speaker 1: Wanna finally protested in the most effective way. She knew
Speaker 1: how when she had certainly honed at her during her
Speaker 1: time at Philip's court um and she didn't eat, and
Speaker 1: she didn't sleep, she didn't talk. She'd stand in the
Speaker 1: rain and man to to be let be able to
Speaker 1: go home, and by fifteen o four Isabella finally let
Speaker 1: her go. She convinced her to to leave baby fernand
Speaker 1: behind in Spain, since he was kind of young to travel. Um.
Speaker 1: It was clearly a fateful decision, and that's partly because
Speaker 1: Wanna threw in her lot with Philip, but also because
Speaker 1: she showed her mother and many other people back in
Speaker 1: Spain that she might be a little unbalanced. All of
Speaker 1: these uncleanly sort of protests, Um, we're disturbing to folks,
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be the perfect weapon for
Speaker 1: Philip to gain Juanna's inheritance. But we're going to stop
Speaker 1: there and talk about what happens later, what happens with Philip,
Speaker 1: what happens with Ferdinand, what happens with Charles, who's this
Speaker 1: little kid at this point, um, and who ends up
Speaker 1: getting to run Castile and Aragon he does. So we
Speaker 1: will be discussing all of that in a second episode.
Speaker 1: So what kind of listener mail do we have today, Sarah? Well,
Speaker 1: we have one that I chose because it was pretty charming,
Speaker 1: but it also has a Spanish reference in it, but
Speaker 1: I'll get to that the end. It's from listener Monica,
Speaker 1: and she wrote to say, I'm a fiction novel us
Speaker 1: and I just love your podcast. When I'm writing, I
Speaker 1: always have you guys or Josh and Chuck from stuff
Speaker 1: you should know on in the background without knowing it.
Speaker 1: You guys have been a huge help when I'm looking
Speaker 1: for voices for my characters. Currently, Sarah, you give voice
Speaker 1: to the good queen, and Dablina you give voice to
Speaker 1: the heroine. When I finally published the first part of
Speaker 1: my book series, I'll be sure to send you both
Speaker 1: a copy. So that's very fun. You do have a
Speaker 1: very queenly thank you. You have the voice of the heroine.
Speaker 1: Um So. Monica does go on though to to mention
Speaker 1: that she has a little bit of a connection to
Speaker 1: the great Spanish hero El Sid, and suggested him as
Speaker 1: a topic. Um Katie and I talked about his horse
Speaker 1: long ago in the History's Greatest Battle Horses that's at Um,
Speaker 1: but she thought that Elsid himself would make a pretty
Speaker 1: excellence Objeck. So we want to go way back in
Speaker 1: Spanish history, that would be a good place to start.
Speaker 1: We have another email here from Shannon in Texas and
Speaker 1: she says, I was so excited to see the subject
Speaker 1: of your most recent podcast, which is a different podcast
Speaker 1: from probably the most recent one many of you have
Speaker 1: listened to. If you're listening in order, it's the Jim
Speaker 1: Booie podcast that she's referring to. She says, I have
Speaker 1: a family connection to share. My dad is really into genealogy,
Speaker 1: and in some book read of a dispute between Jim
Speaker 1: Booie and one of my direct ancestors. Further research found
Speaker 1: that my ancestors sold Louie land that wasn't his to sell.
Speaker 1: So there is the instance of land speculation that infuriated
Speaker 1: Booie and showed him that a profit was to be had.
Speaker 1: While I was in high school fifteen years ago, we
Speaker 1: took a little trip to the basement of a parish
Speaker 1: courthouse in Louisiana and actually held the original bill of
Speaker 1: sale in our hands, complete with my ancestors and Booie's signatures.
Speaker 1: Dad and I joked that we should have just walked
Speaker 1: out with it. The digital picture isn't great. In the
Speaker 1: courthouse apparently figured that they shouldn't allow just anyone to
Speaker 1: produce their records unsupervised. Darn. Anyway, we were pretty blown
Speaker 1: away by that story. I mean, if if it's the
Speaker 1: same guy, the one who kicked off Bouie in the
Speaker 1: first place, realizing that this could be a business after
Speaker 1: he got cheated himself, that's pretty, pretty wild a good
Speaker 1: ancestry story. It is so thank you guys, thank you
Speaker 1: for suggestions for writing stories inspired by our voices. That's
Speaker 1: always cool. Um and just sharing suggestions too. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: if you have any more suggestions to share with us,
Speaker 1: you can write us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can look us up on Facebook. We're also
Speaker 1: on Twitter at mist in history. And if you want
Speaker 1: to learn a little bit more about Wanta's predicament, we
Speaker 1: do have an article on how royalty works. You can
Speaker 1: check that out by visiting our homepage at www dot
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com that was named the land Named the land who